released today by Gartner Research, PC sales will continue to decline steadily over the next five years, and sales of mobile devices will continue to see incredible growth. The report suggests that tablet and mobile phone sales will eclipse 2.6 billion units by 2017, rising nearly 30 percent from 1.85 billion units in 2012. Alongside the proliferation of mobile devices is the decline of desktop-based and notebook PCs. Gartner estimates 341 million PC units were sold in 2012. That number is expected to drop to 271 million by 2017. processor design gives outstanding energy efficiency while handling the heaviest of workloads, making tablets a fully capable computing option that we can carry anywhere. Some also credit the shift from desktop to mobile devices to the increasing availability of lower-priced tablets. Indeed, advancements in technology have allowed for more competition and cost-effective production along with the incredible leaps in functionality. Widespread use of services like cloud storage and video streaming have also reduced our dependence on bulky hard drives, turning heavy laptops and PC towers into unappealing, antiquated relics, much like CRT monitors.
When I upgraded to Windows 8 64-bit a few months back, a strange thing happened. The thumbnails for all of my PDF files disappeared. Normally, when I view an Explorer folder, I have the PDF files on "view large icons" (as it then gives me a preview of what the first page of the file looks like). But Windows 8 wiped all of that. I couldn't even get the standard Adobe PDF logo. So I did my usual and went Googling for answers and ended up with a free program called 64-bit Adobe Preview Handler. This small app (which weighs in at a measly 1MB) makes a small Windows registry fix that brings your PDF thumbnails back. The issue of disappearing thumbnails doesn't seem to be confined to just Windows 8 though. Anyone with either Vista or Windows 7 64-bit may also experience this problem, and 64-bit Adobe Preview Handler is here to save the day. Simply do the usual download and install and when you start it up, you will see a small window. There is pretty much nothing to configure–no options or anything. Click "apply fix" and then restart Windows Explorer. If it still doesn't work, you may also have to clear your thumbnail cache, but don't worry, this is very easy to do. Simply run Disk Cleanup, select the C drive, put a tick in the Thumbnails checkbox, and then click OK. The system will do the rest. Check back again on Windows Explorer, and you should see your PDF thumbnails appear again.
At PCWorld we’ve been producing digital versions of our . We’ve designed the Enhanced iPad Edition to deliver the best possible experience of magazine on the iPad, optimizing the pages to work with all iPads (running iOS 5.0 or later) and including support for high-res Retina displays. The enhanced format enables us to provide rich multimedia content not available in print, including videos, interactive slideshows and features, and other multimedia elements. And because we’ve remastered the magazine content into an iPad-friendly layout, you can use the intuitive gestures and touchscreen capabilities native to the iPad to navigate through each issue. Your options include using the interactive table of contents, swiping from page to page, or gliding through article content from the tip of your finger. Embedded links take you directly to related information within the issue as well as to websites for additional content; and the app allows you to bookmark and share articles via email and Twitter.
about military action against the United States and South Korea lately, the country's looking a bit silly after several of its online accounts were hacked. . , a South Korean political group with ties to North Korea. links to several of the hacked pages.
has slid into the Windows Store. As with MLB.tv's existing apps for iOS and Android, the Windows 8/RT version allows you to watch live and recorded games, see scores from around the league and listen to gameday audio. Of course, you'll need an MLB.tv subscription to do most of those things ($20 per month or $110 per year for basic; $25 per month or $130 per year for Premium; or $20 per year for audio). The app itself is free, and one game is available for free viewing every day. In terms of features, the Windows 8 app is an absolute wasteland compared to other platforms. On MLB.tv's iOS and Android apps, you can look at stats, box scores and recaps. You can also read news about your favorite teams, and watch video highlights of the games you missed.
your backup. But there are disadvantages, as well. One is that you lose physical control of your backup. Those files could be destroyed because of someone else's corporate decision.
, the same basic technology that powers Chrome and Safari, critics wondered if this was a bad move for the open Web. The worry was that browser vendors were putting too much power in the hands of one rendering engine. Many, no doubt, were recalling the years when Internet Explorer dominated browser usage requiring Web developers to cater to IE's peculiarities. , an open source project created by Apple in 2001. Google will instead work on its own rendering engine called Blink, taking the new engine’s initial codebase from WebKit, a practice called forking. Chromium is the Google-led open-source browser project that supplies the code for the company's Chrome Web browser. With the addition of Blink, there are now four major Web engines including WebKit, Mozilla's Gecko engine powering Firefox, and Microsoft's Trident for Internet Explorer.
Businesses and privacy advocates are squaring off over a proposed law that would make California the first state in the nation to give people the right to see all the information companies have on them and to find out who the data is shared with. Groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union say California Assembly bill AB 1291 would help consumers decide whether they wanted to continue doing business with a company, based on the way it handled their personal information. To opponents such as the California Chamber of Commerce and TechAmerica, the bill is too broad in defining the information covered and would open businesses up to frivolous lawsuits. On Monday, lawmakers amended the bill, introduced in February by Democratic Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, to increase its chances of getting through the Legislature. To opponents, the changes were not enough.
, you might think of Lenovo’s IdeaCentre Q190 as a full-figured micro PC. It’s not the smallest such model, but it boasts a ton of ports, it has enough interior space to move air over its components, and it has a Blu-ray drive option. If you're looking for a home-theater PC, those are important features. The Q190 is a small monolith measuring 6.10 by 7.55 inches. It’s 0.86 inch thick (expanding to 1.5 inches thick with its piggyback slot-feed optical drive attached). A stand that stabilizes the unit when upright adds about another half-inch of height, but Lenovo also provides a VESA mounting bracket so you can mount the Q190 on the back of a display. Mic and headphone jacks, two USB 3.0 ports, and a six-in-one media-card reader are hidden behind a door on the front of the unit. On the back you’ll find HDMI and VGA video outputs, three USB 2.0 ports, ethernet, an optical S/PDIF port, and the power jack for the AC adapter. The computer and the optical drive both have Kensington lock points. The Q190 also has a built-in 802.11b/g/n wireless network adapter. The bundled keyboard and mouse are middle-of-the-road units, but Lenovo’s palm-sized Enhanced Multimedia Remote, which combines a backlit QWERTY keyboard and fingertip mouse and costs $80, is worth a look if you plan to use the system from your sofa. The Q190 is not quite as quiet as the nearly noiseless NUC, or the Edge with its super-quiet fan, but we didn’t find its noise signature to be bothersome.
Clear your calendars, brush off your cutoffs, and queue up ¿The Final Countdown¿: Arrested Development producer Mitch Hurwitz has announced the date of the season 4 premiere!
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo flew for the first time in several months yesterday. The nine minute glide flight was the 24th for the future spacecraft and the second time it has flown with the airframe and rocket engine configured as it will be for upcoming powered flights.
Facebook's new mobile platform, Facebook Home, will not ship with any advertisements. But advertisements are the whole point, and they will land in Facebook Home eventually, starting with the automatic "Cover Feed" scroll that shows up as soon as you remove the phone from your pocket.
The operator of the popular file-sharing service isoHunt is demanding a federal appeals court grant it a jury trial, two weeks after the court declared it a massive copyright scofflaw and said it's on the hook for what could be millions of dollars in damages payable to Hollywood studios.
Photograph by PlatonFACEBOOKMark Zuckerberg on Facebook Home, Money, and the Future of CommunicationAs caretaker of a service with a billion users, Mark Zuckerberg is used to sparking protest. Any time his company releases a new product, adjusts a privacy setting, or even tweaks the design, thousands of outraged Facebookers take to the Web to decry ...
As U.S.-North Korea tensions continue, one of the CIA's former top Pyongyang analysts says she thinks the North will lash out before tensions actually recede.
Maybe you were hoping for something radically new and different from a Facebook phone. If so, Zuck just broke your heart. But so what. Facebook never does anything new. New doesn¿t matter in the blue. What matters is this: What Mark Zuckerberg announced today runs software called Facebook Home that makes it easier for people to spend more time with Facebook. And that¿s all he really needed to pull off.
AMC has ordered a pilot for a new unscripted show that finds the world's biggest super-fans and then gives them "an awesome, otherwise unattainable experience related to their obsession." We'd watch that.
Facebook Home is a new way to experience Facebook on your Android handset. And when Zuck introduced this latest push into mobile, he threw out a whole bunch of terms we'd never heard before. Here's what they mean.
Say you finished your Kickstarter campaign for some product or other, and after the inevitable growing pains, you've gotten all the rewards out to your backers who are gleefully emailing you to say what a great thing it is that you've built. What's next? You can't bring it back to Kickstarter.
Anyone can now use the Google Compute Engine -- the web giant's answer to Amazon's seminal EC2 cloud computing service. Well, anyone who's willing to pay Google $400 a month for customer support.
Google is breaking away from WebKit, the rendering engine that currently powers the company's Chrome web browser. Google has forked WebKit to create its own rendering engine, dubbed Blink. While it may dash the dreams of those hoping for a WebKit-only web, Blink is good news for the web and web developers.
It used to be that what happened in your dreams was your own little secret. But today scientists report for the first time that they've successfully decoded details of people's dreams using brain scans.
Mark Zuckerberg wants to turn your Android phone into a simple sharing device. And by that, he means he wants to turn it into a Facebook phone.
By the time kids are two years old, iPads tend to be within their Cheerio-encrusted grasp. But with nearly invisible components inside, tykes could be left thinking that tablet technology is magic. Enter Adafruit's Circuit Playground, the latest in a growing trend of independently produced science education YouTube video series.
The U.S. government wants to find a cure for one the most vexing causes of radioactive death -- beginning with your bones.
In this episode of
Raven Software today announced that they have released the source code for the single-player components of Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy.
Google has filed a rare petition to challenge an ultra-secret national security letter issued by the government to obtain private data about one or more of its users.
Steven Spielberg¿s dinosaurs blew us away back in 1993, but paleontology has come a long way since then. How does Jurassic Park's depiction of dinosaurs hold up 20 years later? Join us at 3 p.m. EDT on Thursday, 4 April, for a live Google Hangout with dinosaur experts.
The name Ed Felten may not exactly be a household word, but if you think people should be able to jailbreak their mobile phones, then you probably owe him a debt. For more than a decade now, Felten has promoted an important idea that has often put him at odds with the music industry and big technology companies: the notion that consumers should be able to take apart and learn about the software and hardware on devices that they own.
Follow the live updates from Facebook's Android event, where the company is expected to reveal an HTC handset with deep Facebook integration -- essentially, the Facebook phone.
A household is a business. And like a business, there are tools to help you keep everything -- from repairs to grocery shopping -- running smoothly.
Moon Express is a private startup working on one of the most audacious projects in the new space industry: they want to mine the moon. CEO Bob Richards explains the company's plans to create a FedEx-like business ferrying stuff to and from the moon as well as how he intends to win the $20 million Google Lunar X Prize.
Omar Hammami is an American jihadist from Somalia. He intends to stay one, he tells Danger Room, even as he's struck up a Twitter friendship with U.S. counterterrorists.
Cartoonist Matt Bors reviews the explosions, guns and ninjas of
Marketshare-wise, Android is crushing iOS. But if you look at actual usage stats, that relationship is completely flip-flopped. And that¿s weird.
Why aren¿t we all now talking
This week on
In an interview with Wired, Andrew DeVigal gives the scoop on the intersection of news and software, essential collaborations with coders, the importance of audio for photographers, fatherhood and how we don¿t always need to be plugged in.